I can’t stop thinking about the smell in that parking lot.
A few months ago, a driver for Dixie River Freight, Inc. was hauling raw chicken in a refrigerated semi trailer when he stopped at a Montana truck stop to rethink his compensation.
He wanted more, and he decided to ask for it. He let his supervisors know, via text message, that he was holding all 37,000 pounds of chicken hostage. If he did not receive a hefty ransom, he threatened, he would abandon the $80,000 load.
Dixie River called his bluff. No deal.
But the driver wasn’t bluffing. He turned off the truck’s cooling unit and walked away. Nobody knew where he had left it.
A month passed before anyone at the Flying J truck stop became suspicious of the vehicle in their parking lot … and leery of the sickening mess that was dripping out the back.
It didn’t take long before authorities apprehended the driver and took the terrible truck straight to a landfill. Now no one has to look at it or smell it or think about it anymore. So the problem has been fixed, right?
Maybe not. Nothing can fix a selfish decision like this. There is no positive outcome if 37,000 pounds of meat rot in the ground when there are hungry people everywhere who would have loved for fresh chicken to have made it from the truck to their tables. Not to mention the unknown effect of that much raw waste in a landfill. Maybe the driver was trying to stick it to his employer, but in reality, he stuck it to all of us. What a stupid, stupid thing to do.
I would like to think I would never do something like that. But don’t I do it in a different way? And, at times, don’t you?
The freight company entrusted a time-sensitive and very valuable cargo to the driver, and God has entrusted a time-sensitive and very valuable calling to you and to me. The trucker was hauling chicken. We carry freedom and peace and hope. We carry good news.
You and I deliver it in different ways, according to our spiritual gifts. Some of us lead, some teach, some give, some show mercy. It is the work that God has prepared in advance for us to do.
I know that God has commissioned me to encourage through writing. But sometimes I hold my calling hostage because I don’t think He has given me enough of what I need to get the job done. I balk at the solitude it requires. I want more people around, more fun company. I complain about my cranky computer. I want one that doesn’t take a year and a half to do what I tell it to do. I feel irritated when only a few people read what I have written. I want more readers, to make the daily-ness of writing feel more doable … or, dare I confess it, more important. I ask for a thousand forms of compensation every day.
God promises that there will be a fine reward for work done in His name. Maybe, deep down, I am wanting to define my own rewards, instead of just doing the work and trusting the Lord to give me goodness by His definition.
Is there more stupidity in a trucker holding his cargo for ransom or in a Christian holding her calling for ransom? Is there a difference in threatening a supervisor that I will walk away from raw chicken or in threatening God that I will give up if there is not help or benefit on the horizon soon?
It might be that God’s answer to me would be the same as the freight company’s: No deal.
If you or I give up or walk away from our callings because we want it to be easier or because we are tired or because we want it to look different, then we are operating from fear that God– in and of Himself— won’t be enough for us. That His yoke will not prove to be as easy and light as He said it would be. We are afraid and so we ask for more.
He has generously invited us to stay at our tasks, but I don’t think He will beg us. He might just let us walk away.
Who loses when we abandon the good work that He prepared in advance for us to do?
All of the people who are hungry for what God has asked us to deliver, that’s who. Actual people with actual beating hearts are the cost of our fear.
The world would be worse off if we walked away from our gifts. Besides, we can count on the words of Galatians 6:9: “Do not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time, you will reap a harvest, if you do not give up.”
But maybe we need to ask ourselves if we are willing to say, along with Habakkuk, that even if we get none of the rewards we hope for, God Himself is enough for us:
“Even though the fig trees have no blossoms,
and there are no grapes on the vines;
even though the olive crop fails,
and the fields lie empty and barren;
even though the flocks die in the fields,
and the cattle barns are empty,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord!
I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!
The Sovereign Lord is my strength!”
(Habakkuk 3:17-19)
We do not need to fear that we will work and work and work in vain. Our reward is far greater than anything we could ask for.